


Memento

by theladyofthewest



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23797996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyofthewest/pseuds/theladyofthewest
Summary: A father's love passed from generation to generation.
Relationships: Higurashi Kagome/InuYasha, Inu no Taishou/Izayoi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 48





	Memento

“Your father made that when he found out you were going to be born.” **  
**

Inuyasha jumped, turning to face his mother with a guilty expression. The small wooden dog slipped from his fingers, hitting the floor with a clattering noise. His mother’s gaze snapped to the figurine, horror crossing her features for a moment before her face smoothed over again.

“Oops! Sorry, Mama,” he whispered softly, stooping to retrieve the fallen toy. “It’s okay, though!” He said brightly, examining it for any damage before bringing the figure close to his heart, using the fabric of his clothing to polish it slightly.

“Father made this?”

The tiny dog seemed incredibly heavy in his small hands just then. The memento of a man he’d never known. The man who had given his life to see Inuyasha live.

His mother’s voice was whimsical when she spoke next, and he didn’t need to look at her to know she was lost in a different world, one where her Touga still remained at her side.

“Oh, yes. He was so excited when he found out about you, you know? Had all of these ideas of who you would look like, who you would act like.” She laughed softly to herself, before the sound of slight sniffling reached him.

Inuyasha’s gaze remained glued to the figure in his hands. His father had made this. His father had touched this. His fingers ghosted over the smooth wood, wondering whether his father had ever done the same.

“How long did it take Father?” he whispered, fearing that his mother would hear the quiver in his voice if he spoke any louder.

“He spent hours working on that. He wanted it to be perfect for you.” Her voice was just as quiet.

Hours.

His father had spent hours working on this. For him. He could almost see it - a faceless man, with hair as silver as his own, hunched over and carving away at a piece of wood. Carving away with the love only a father could feel for a child they didn’t know.

A child he would never know.

His vision blurred with tears even as his small fist closed over the dog.

“He wanted you to always remember that you were his son.”

A part of him cried that he could never forget it. Not with the colour of his eyes, or his hair, the ears that sat atop his head, or the claws that graced the ends of his fingers.

Rubbing the back of his hand against his eyes roughly, he scoffed lightly even as he tucked the figurine into a fold of his haori, close to his heart.

“Keh.”

Glancing upwards, he caught his mother’s smile for an instant before she folded him into her embrace, tucking him against her breast and kissing his head gently.

“You are so much like him,” she breathed, and he could feel her hands shaking against his back. “You haven’t the slightest idea.”

When he felt her take in a shuddering breath, he pushed his face further against her to quell his own tears.

_____________________________________________________________________

Then the sickness came.

It came and it ravaged the place his mother had once called home.

He waited with baited breath, relieved when the illness seemed to spare his mother. The last thing he had expected was for it to come in the dark of the night and steal her away from him.

One night he awoke to the sounds of shouting and bustling in the halls outside of the small room that had been assigned to him and his mother.

The doors burst open and suddenly there was chaos. A woman he recognized as his mother’s own mother, strode inside, her soft hands reaching for him, hesitating for but a moment before she clasped them around him and hoisted him upwards into her arms.

“Quickly, we must get you outside of these walls before he comes for you!”

The quiver in her voice left no doubt in his mind of who he was. His mother’s father. His grandfather.

“But what about Mama?” Inuyasha whispered, some instinctual part of him cautioning that now was not the time to make a fuss.

His grandmother froze, arms tightening about him for the slightest of moments, and he could have sworn he heard her take in a shuddering breath before she continued on down the dimly lit passageway without a word.

Exhaustion took hold of him again, and Inuyasha found his eyes drooping shut again, before he came crashing back to reality when his feet were planted firmly on the damp ground outside of the shabby manor his mother had once called home.

His grandmother’s gaze bore deeply into his and her hands came up to cup his cheeks, forcing him to look directly at her as she spoke, nails digging slightly into his flesh as she struggled to impose the seriousness of her words on him.

“You must leave. Leave and go very far from this place!”

His brow furrowed in confusion as he opened his mouth to question her, but she shushed him impatiently, pushing him off towards the thicket of trees beyond them with another muffled plea.

  
“Now, Inuyasha! I can’t tell you how sorry I am, child, but this I must do, for Izayoi’s sake.”

Her words did nothing to alleviate the myriad of questions running through his mind, but the sound of his mother’s name brought him back to the situation at hand. He had only just opened his mouth to question his grandmother when she slammed the gates shut in his face.

Inuyasha was of half a mind to bang on the closed doors when the sound of clanging metal and angry shouts reached his ears and the smell of burning wood singed his nostrils. Flattening his ears against his head, he backed up a few steps, toes curling in the dirt as a wave of true fear washed over him.

Somewhere, deep within him, he realized that his mother wasn’t coming back. From this day onwards, he would be completely and utterly alone. Never again would he feel his mother’s arms wrap around him, folding him up in the worn fabric of her junihitoe, revelling in the steady thud of her heartbeat as she would keep him pressed to her chest, safe from the world’s cruel gaze.

So he ran.

He turned and sprinted into the cover of the trees, scrambling up into the canopy of leaves as fast as his small limbs would allow, all the while feeling a small wooden dog bumping against his leg with every movement.

A deep resentment came over him as he fled, wondering whether his father had, had an idea of the kind of suffering he had condemned him to.

‘Why did he have to go off and die?’ Part of him screamed, and the wooden dog in his pocket suddenly felt as heavy as a rock.

He wasn’t an idiot, he knew that his life was only half as difficult as it was because of his father’s passing. He had heard the whispers of his father’s power, of his strength.

‘If he was alive then no one would be able to say anything to us,’ he thought wistfully, suddenly longing more than ever for the father he’d never known.

But as the cold wind howled around him, and torrents of rain began to soak his clothing, Inuyasha knew he was completely and utterly alone.

_______________________________________________________________________

Years had passed since that fateful night. He had loved and lost and loved again. He had lived and died a thousand times in those years since that night.

For so long, Inuyasha had wondered about his father, whether the man had ever loved him, had ever cared for him. When he had held his newborn son in his arms for the first time, all his doubts had been cleared.

His father had loved him, enough to die for him, more than he could have ever understood in his childhood. How did he know? Simple. Just looking at his son’s face for the first time evoked a feeling within him that he didn’t understand. Was it possible to love another being as much as he did this little bundle in his arms? Inuyasha knew right then that he would gladly walk towards certain death if it meant securing a future for this little boy. Just as his father had done before him.

“Your grandfather made this, years ago.” He had whispered one night much later, his young son’s golden eyes, so much like his own and like his own father’s before him, peered at him with undivided interest. “When he found out that I was gonna be born.”

Tiny ears flicked about in every direction as the boy’s small hands reached for the carving, cradling it gently.

“He loved you a lot, right?”

He figured it was probably some spice Kagome had been cooking with that made it so hard to speak suddenly, caused the thickness in his throat and the watering in his eyes.

“Yeah…” Inuyasha said finally, swallowing hard, “he did.”

He watched his son examine the intricately carved wood. “Just like I love you.”

And now as he watched his son frolick around the clearing in front of him, a worn wooden dog clutched in his tiny fist, he revelled in the feeling of the warm air surrounding him, the gentle gusts folding around him like the sleeves of a junihitoe. He took in the warmth of the sun, its rays a familiar shade of gold as they watched over him.

It was hard to believe that it had taken him so long to realize it. His mother was the summer air, wrapping around him in a sweet embrace, and his father the warmth of the glowing sun, always watching. Never to be touched, but always felt.

So long as he lived under the view of that sun, he was never alone.


End file.
